Products As Agents: Metaphors for Designing the Products of the Iot
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Products as Agents: Metaphors for Designing the Products of the IoT Age Nazli Cila1, Iskander Smit2, Elisa Giaccardi3, Ben Kröse1 1 Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Digital Life Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, [email protected], [email protected] 2 Info.nl, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, [email protected] 3 Delft University of Technology, Department of Industrial Design, Delft, The Netherlands, [email protected] ABSTRACT empower people and enrich their everyday life. In order to Design-based inquiries into the networked products of the gain insights on how to create networked products that Internet of Things (IoT) lack a coherent understanding of attain these aims, as design researchers, we are required to the effect of such products on society. This paper proposes better understand not only the technical infrastructure and a new taxonomy for networked products, which would technological parameters of networked products (as IoT is allow articulation on their current state and future, and generally tackled in engineering and computer sciences), provide insights to designers for creating meaningful and but also the social relationships of these products with aesthetic products of IoT. Central to this framework is the everyday practices of people [37]. proposition that our current product-scape should be understood as a distribution of material agencies and best For the past couple of decades, there has been a shift in the analyzed through the metaphor of “agency”. We identify definition of designers’ main task from designing “things”, three types of agencies, i.e., the Collector, the Actor, and which are objects, to designing Things, namely socio- the Creator, and discuss how this approach could create material assemblies [6,7]. Things have become political new design methodologies to create more meaningful gatherings around shared matters of concern with a visible networked products that would empower people in their effect in the world. When it comes to the current product- everyday lives. scape of IoT, however, we fail to observe this Thing-ness. This situation is humorously demonstrated at the blog “we Author Keywords put a chip on it” (http://weputachipinit.tumblr.com/). Its Internet of Things; networked products; agency; metaphor; tagline “It was just a dumb thing. Then we put a chip in it. interaction design. Now it's a smart thing” accurately summarizes the current ACM Classification Keywords approach towards smart products. Clothespins that notify H.5.m. Information interfaces and presentation: you when the laundry is dry or socks that keep track of how Miscellaneous. many times they were washed indicate how shortsightedly IoT could be executed. Being smart, however, has a lot INTRODUCTION more potential. Products of the 21st century are quite different from their older brothers and sisters. Since information processing has Networked products should be a hybrid of technological become cheap and widespread, the capability to collect and developments and cultural articulation [37]. They need to handle information has become one of the many ‘materials’ be in a form that enables users to invite these products into from which products can be made [38]. Through gaining their lives and makes an impact on people’s life quality. computational power and network connectivity, cars, Design practice has been trying to invent the new IoT thermostats, and even light bulbs have begun to medium by exploring the new affordances and challenges communicate with their users, manufacturers, and of course that being connected brings [46]. Design research, one another. The speed and scale of this “Internet of therefore, should catch up with the practice by undertaking Things” (IoT) provide new design opportunities to inquiries into what these products mean for design culture and society and how to create empowering networked Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal products that go beyond simply embedding a chip in or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or something. Coming to grips with the IoT demands new distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work ways of seeing, understanding and asking pertinent owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is questions about the ontological nature of smart and permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute connected products and their impact on users’ lives. to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. Frameworks and theories in interaction design help making CHI 2017, May 06-11, 2017, Denver, CO, USA © 2017 ACM. ISBN 978-1- strategic choices about how to proceed and where to invest 4503-4655-9/17/05…$15.00 energy [36]. In this paper, we propose a framework that is DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025797 based on the metaphor of “agency” in order to do so. In our understanding, IoT currently deals with four different theoretical approach that follows from an understanding of types of products: (1) products that connect to its users to product agency by discussing the benefits of this metaphor, inform their status and receive orders, (2) products that propose design methodologies that are fitting for creating connect to its users and learn from these interactions to agents and discuss the design challenges that follow from become more intelligent, (3) products that are connected to the form and behavior of such agents. other products to exchange status information that is used to THE RISE OF AGENCY steer rule-based behavior, and (4) products that do not Scientific inquiry into the notion of agency is not new to the connect to the user or other products via Internet, but have science and technology studies, humanities, feminist studies an internal architecture that can adapt to the behavior of the and philosophy. Over the past decades, scholarship in these user. All these types indicate a capacity to sense and act disciplines has started to retire from perspectives that place autonomously. These products can learn and evolve. They human beings at its center. This non-anthropocentric can reveal new patterns and change our minds. In other understanding prompts considering human as a single knot words, they are actants with performative roles in our lives. in a system where many other nonhuman actors are also at Seeing them as agents can help us unravel the ecologies play. Each human or nonhuman actor in the system exerts between products and users, provide guidance about impact on others. analyzing and discussing the products of IoT, and eventually offer a new framework for developing The most prominent account in this regard is Actor- methodologies to design them better. Network Theory (ANT). ANT offers valuable insights into mapping the complex relationships between technologies The IoT field is no stranger to metaphors. Kuniavsky, for and humans. Scholars in this tradition revoke the privilege instance, uses the term “information shadow” to refer to the of human actor and discuss the ontological symmetry of digital information that tails a product’s usage [38]. Rose humans and nonhumans in networks of relations [40,42]. In uses the metaphor of enchantment to describe the pleasant other words, human and nonhuman are studied as equal experiences that well-designed smart products provide [49]. actors in any kind of network, and their agencies can be As casting a magic spell to an ordinary object, the smart continuously transformed into one another. This flat products gain some remarkable ability that make them more ontology is also at focus in materialist philosophies, e.g., useful, engaging and delightful, than their ordinary self. [10,13,31]. In particular, “Object-oriented ontology” Romero, Pousman and Mateas describe the potential of (OOO) represents the philosophical positions that dissociate ubiquitous computer systems to sense and react philosophy from anthropocentrism and consider objects to unpredictably to the behavior of users as an “alien live an existence that exceeds the relations with humans. presence” [48]. IoT as a field is susceptible to using Central to this proposition is considering objects “as entities descriptive metaphors, because many concepts of the field in their own right without requiring recourse to human use, are rather abstract and the effect of its outcomes are perception, or meaning making” [19]. difficult to grasp, which is what metaphors are good at overcoming. Although these metaphors vividly evoke the As a matter of fact, this is the argument that ANT and OOO invisible, yet powerfully present potential of IoT, they do stand apart. Although both perspectives ascribe human and not offer a framework in which we can systematically nonhuman equal being, in OOO the reality of objects is compare and abstract the use and impact of smart products. binary—something is either real or not regardless of the relations it enters into [14]. In ANT, on the other hand, In his seminal work, Schön introduces the term “generative alliances take the center stage and the reality of objects is metaphor” in order to broaden the extend of metaphor from defined through each object’s relation to other actors. The being a frame for looking at things to a process by which more an object enters into additional alliances and extends new perspectives on the world come into existence [52]. the range of its effect on other actants, the more real it We consider that the potential of smart products to change becomes [14]. Therefore, there is a constant dynamic behaviors of users and their capacity to make a visible transformation of things through coupling. effect on society call for a generative metaphor. A metaphor of agency can provide such new way of thinking as it Another theory from social sciences, activity theory, also accounts for the ways we currently communicate and work supports this claim.